TechnoLawyer: Online/Cloud

Today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire covers an online marketing service for law firms (see article below), a Web-based replacement for Microsoft Exchange, two Outlook plugins that prevent you from making embarrassing mistakes, and an iPhone app for editing Word documents. Don't miss the next issue.

Sit Back, Relax, and Grow Your Law Firm Practice

Law firms interested in growing must engage in marketing. That is a fact. Marketing dollars are moving online, primarily because it's cheaper and more measurable than traditional marketing. That is a fact. But popular online advertising vehicles such as Google AdWords favor businesses with the expertise and resources to leverage their many intricacies. That is unfortunately a fact as few law firms can play this game. Instead, law firms need more of a set-it-and-forget-it approach to online marketing.

ExpertHub Online Legal Network … in One Sentence
ExpertHub Online Legal Network (ExpertHub) is an online marketing service designed to funnel prospective clients to law firms in a wide variety of practice areas.

The Killer Feature
ExpertHub consist of a network of legal sites such as LawFirms.com, AccidentAttorneys.com, BankruptcyLawFirms.com, TechnologyLawyers.com, and many others. These sites contain a growing collection of articles and other information about their respective areas of law.

Thanks to a combination of content, site architecture, and some alchemy (a.k.a. trade secrets), ExpertHub's legal sites appear on the first page of Google for searches such as "personal injury lawyer" and "bankruptcy filing." As a result, the sites receive lots of traffic from people seeking legal services.

ExpertHub transforms this traffic into qualified leads for your law firm using a questionnaire. When a prospect's legal needs match your law firm's profile, you receive their name, email address, and telephone number. ExpertHub tells us that it delivered more than 14,000 leads last month.

Other Notable Features
To get started with ExpertHub, you use the expertPLANNER proposal generator to figure out what type of subscription would best suit your firm and its marketing goals. Before you spend a dime, expertPLANNER will tap into ExpertHub's historical data to predict the number of leads you'll receive and how much it will cost. You can run "What Ifs" to see how changing geographic location, practice areas, case types, etc. impacts these numbers.

While you can simply create a profile and then sit back and collect leads, more proactive firms willing to do a little work can take advantage of ExpertHub's expertSYNDICATION service through which you can publish articles on ExpertHub's sites and also link to these articles in your profile.

ExpertHub does not charge for its expertSYNDICATION service so it costs only your time. The articles add depth to your profile and can also generate more leads. If you're too busy to write articles, ExpertHub can write them for you for a fee.

Once you start working with ExpertHub, you can track performance using the expertSTAT dashboard, which shows you profile and article views, lead volume, and more.

What Else Should You Know?
ExpertHub's subscription prices are based on historical lead volumes for your geographic location(s) and practice area(s). Learn more about ExpertHub.

How to Receive TechnoLawyer NewsWire
So many products, so little time. In each issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, you'll learn about five new products for the legal profession. Pressed for time? The "In One Sentence" section describes each product in one sentence, and the "Killer Feature" section describes each product's most compelling feature. The TechnoLawyer NewsWire newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to Fat Friday: Miriam Jacobson shares how she travels light buts stays connected, Mazyar Hedayat responds to criticism of his take on social networking for lawyers, Claire Pater reviews TalkSwitch, Harold Atencio reviews Second Copy for automated backup, and Angie D'Urso explains how to create and edit screenshots in Windows. Don't miss this issue.

How to Receive Fat Friday
Our most serendipitous offering, Fat Friday consists of unsolicited contributions by TechnoLawyer members. You'll no doubt enjoy it because of its mix of interesting topics and genuinely useful knowledge, including brutally honest product reviews and informative how-tos. The Fat Friday newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to Answers to Questions: Laurie Odgers compares Worldox to eDocs and Interwoven Worksite, Adam Drennen reviews AVG and Blink antivirus software, John Sheil reviews Google Voice, Cynthia Zook shares some helpful information regarding WordPerfect/Word conversion after installing Service Pack 2 for Office 2003, and Morris Tabush discusses Bill4Time for mid-sized law firms seeking a Web-based billing solution. Don't miss this issue.

How to Receive Answers to Questions
Do you believe in the wisdom of crowds? In Answers to Questions, TechnoLawyer members answer legal technology and practice management questions submitted by their peers. This newsletter's popularity stems from the relevance of the questions and answers to virtually everyone in the legal profession. The Answers to Questions newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Originally published on May 25, 2009 in our free SmallLaw newsletter.

How did you pick your last office computer? Your doctor? Both decisions can have serious consequences, but one was probably preceded by research and comparison shopping, while the other was based on faith.

In fact the only thing these decisions probably had in common was that they most likely involved guidance from colleagues, friends, family, trade publications or, you guessed it, the Internet.

Welcome to the recommendation economy. Don't think for a moment that professionals can't be talked about, recommended into success or criticized into infamy. In the recommendation economy anything goes, and usually does.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Guess

Even the most independent among us constantly takes cues on how to behave, what to wear, and who to trust. Some cues arise organically from the environment. Others are specifically placed by companies to influence our decisions. The most influential cues of all come from ordinary experience with people who seem the most like us. It's a fact that most people who agree with us seem smart, and most who disagree seem stupid.

For instance, how do prospective clients choose a lawyer? Rates? Win/loss ratio? Articles published or seminars given? Most small firms and sole practitioners observe a "don't ask don't tell" policy on this point. And maybe that's best, because even when asked most clients don't know, aren't sure, or just lie about how they made their choice. So if you can't trust client answers, where can you go to get the straight story? Don't worry — the Internet is here to help.

Behold the Power of the Crowd

If the Internet is an ocean, Twitter is a raging, white rapids river of real-time impressions and feedback. It is also the rawest of feeds from the largest group of voluntary participants on the Internet. You might wonder (as I did) how this all came about. It's simple, really:

1. 25% of Twitter users are voyeurs.
2. 25% of Twitter users are exhibitionists.
3. The other 50% heard about it on Oprah.

In fact, since Oprah's announcement last month the service has grown at an annualized rate of over 1000% per year. Never mind that most of these new users will be casual at best and most likely move on to something else in a month. The point is that Twitter is becoming the focal point for a nation of increasingly vocal consumers that share, and expect, instant feedback. Reputations can now be made or lost in days instead of years.

Go ahead and try a search in Twitter.

Instant Karma's Gonna Get You

Of course your last client probably didn't learn about you on Twitter. Instead, they most likely got your name from friends or neighbors. Maybe it came from another lawyer, a family member, or a Google search.

As it turns out, these sources are only once or twice removed from your Twitter reputation. Each of them is influenced by, and influences, the service. And as Twitter and its spin-offs gain traction in every corner of search-engineland, their impact is felt still more. The result is a vicious or virtuous cycle — depending on whether you are the recipient of good publicity or bad.

Just imagine: more search engines returning more Twitter-related posts about a given lawyer, which reach more people than ever, who in-turn are free to Twitter about their experience, and so on. The "I told two friends" shampoo commercial of our youth is now more like "I told 10,000 followers."

The result is unmistakably viral. Those who "get it" shoot up and up faster than ever, while those who don't are buried further and further in the rankings at light-speed. Twitter doesn't leave much room for "in between" or "middle-of-the-road" reputations.

So, how can you elicit recommendations rather than criticism? Provide your clients with quality work of course. But beyond that obvious strategy, I've developed some others that you and the other readers of this column can use to harness the power of Twitter and other tools to influence prospective clients before they pick up the phone. Stay tuned, and may the Tweets be with you.

Written by Mazyar M. Hedayat of M. Hedayat & Associates, P.C.

How to Receive SmallLaw
Small firm, big dreams. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, SmallLaw provides you with a mix of practical advice that you can use today, and insight about what it will take for small law firms like yours to thrive in the future. The SmallLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to TechnoFeature: Geography can often get in the way of your firm's plans for world domination. But thanks to technology, you can overcome such hurdles. In this article, technology consultant and practice management expert Seth Rowland discusses several innovative law firms, ranging from a solo practitioner to a mega-firm, that have embraced some aspects of virtual law practice. He explains the technology they use to "cut the cord" and expand beyond the "four walls" of their physical office.

How to Receive TechnoFeature
Our flagship newsletter never disappoints thanks to its in-depth reporting by leading legal technology and practice management experts, many of whom have become "household names" in the legal profession. It's in TechnoFeature that you'll find our oft-quoted formal product reviews and accompanying TechnoScore ratings. The TechnoFeature newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to Answers to Questions: Bill Baldwin compares Copernic Desktop Search to Windows Search and Google Desktop, Maxine Aaronson reviews MozyPro, and Andrew Feldstein shares some tips for pasting unformatted text in Word.

How to Receive Answers to Questions
Do you believe in the wisdom of crowds? In Answers to Questions, TechnoLawyer members answer legal technology and practice management questions submitted by their peers. This newsletter's popularity stems from the relevance of the questions and answers to virtually everyone in the legal profession. The Answers to Questions newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire covers eDiscovery review software (see article below), a mobile cellular WiFi router, a document and records management system, electronic billing middleware that connects law firms to their corporate clients, and a Web clipping utility for Firefox. Don't miss the next issue.

Document Review Minus the Drudgery

No matter how advanced technology gets, using document review software will never compare to dining out with your family or friends. Or watching the ball game. Drinking a fine bottle of wine. Driving on a twisty road. But such software can shorten review time, and deepen your insight. And get you home in time for the national anthem.

Kazeon Analysis & Review … in One Sentence
Kazeon Analysis & Review 4.0 is a browser-based software program for reviewing electronic discovery documents, and managing the review process and the reviewers.

The Killer Feature
Document review used to entail looking at every document, though law firms would often outsource the first pass for coding purposes (dates, names, etc.). Nowadays, you can start the review process by searching for a particular name or issue to create a subset of documents.

Recognizing this nonlinear approach, Kazeon beefed up its search technology. Kazeon Analysis & Review displays the number of results and other data in a chart. As you add or remove terms or apply filters, the chart changes in realtime. Speaking of filters, you can apply an unlimited number. You can also conduct concept searches.

When you finalize a subset of documents, you can save a report showing the exact query that produced the set of documents.

Other Notable Features
Once you start looking at documents with Kazeon Analysis & Review, you'll find time-saving features such as one-click issue tagging, metadata clustering, and highlighted search terms.

When reviewing email, Kazeon Analysis & Review groups messages into chronological threads so that you can review related messages together even if they were written weeks or months apart.

If you're the person managing a review project, you'll find many reports at your disposal, enabling you to see who's reviewing what, analyze their performance, and much more. You'll also find an audit trail for every action taken by reviewers.

What Else Should You Know?
Kazeon Analysis & Review can scale to accommodate any size case. You can use it solely on site or online across multiple locations. If needed, Kazeon also offers two related products — Kazeon Collection & Culling and Kazeon Legal Hold Management. Learn more about Kazeon Analysis & Review.

How to Receive TechnoLawyer NewsWire
So many products, so little time. In each issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, you'll learn about five new products for the legal profession. Pressed for time? The "In One Sentence" section describes each product in one sentence, and the "Killer Feature" section describes each product's most compelling feature. The TechnoLawyer NewsWire newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to TechnoFeature: Hollywood loves mentor movies. But don't count on seeing "Westlaw Practitioner" at a theater near you. Westlaw Practitioner is an online service that collects primary and secondary resources by practice area, essentially eliminating the need to create or use a law library. How well does it work? To find out, we asked Houston business and patent lawyer Al Harrison to dive into the practice areas in which he works every day as well as those in which he doesn't and report back to us. Before you take the plunge, read Al's review.

How to Receive TechnoFeature
Our flagship newsletter never disappoints thanks to its in-depth reporting by leading legal technology and practice management experts, many of whom have become "household names" in the legal profession. It's in TechnoFeature that you'll find our oft-quoted formal product reviews and accompanying TechnoScore ratings. The TechnoFeature newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Originally published on May 11, 2009 in our free SmallLaw newsletter.

In my last two columns, I introduced the idea of the MDTR — the "Minimum Daily Technology Requirements" for every solo and small firm's technology needs.

Part 1 discussed hardware needs.

Part 2 discussed software needs.

This third and final segment explores some important ancillary subjects from electrical protection to choosing and using consultants.

MDTR: Electrical Protection

UPS and Surge Protectors

Round out the MDTR for hardware with a battery backup such as the cost effective APC Back-UPS 500 for around $100 to provide both surge protection and electrical backup in the event of power dips or short outages without crashing your PC.

Plug all other components like your printer into professional grade surge protection from companies like APC, Tripplite, or Belkin (general rule — if a "surge protector" is under $15, skip it — not enough protection — you want a stated rating of "surge clamping capacity" of 700 "joules" or better).

Mobile Surge Protectors

Mobile lawyers should always plug their laptops/netbooks into a portable surge protector. Three suitable models include:

Tripplite Traveler ($20)

APC Notebook SurgeArrest ($20)

Belkin Mini Surge Protector with USB Charger ($25)

MDTR: Routers, Switches, Firewalls and Such

A dizzying array of network gear exists for sharing Internet connections (routers and switches), and for keeping the "bad guys" out (firewalls). Some devices even offer the trifecta of shared Internet connectivity, firewalling, and WiFi wireless capabilities. So for simplicity's sake, we'll list one model and discuss the topic more fully at another time.

One possible approach (among many — I could write 50 pages on this subject alone) would be the Netgear FWG114p PROSAFE 802.11G wireless firewall 4 port 10/100 network switch and USB print server. Quite a mouthful, but the gist of it is that it provides Internet sharing, wireless capability, network firewall functions, and network connectivity for about $125.

Extend the network ports with any other 10/100 (Fast Ethernet) switch. If you have a larger budget and proper cabling throughout your firm, consider Gigabit Ethernet.

MDTR: Smartphone

Why would anyone want to practice law without one? Clients, especially in this tight economy, expect you to have this capability (like it or not). I don't care what you have as long as it integrates with the MDTR software list — integrating as easily as possible with your practice management system of choice and Outlook 2007. So whether it's a BlackBerry, an iPhone, a Treo/Centro/(soon to be available) Pre model from Palm, or a Windows Mobile-equipped device, any smartphone is better than, well ... a dumb-phone.

The ultimate selection criterion for any smartphone should be a positive answer to the question: "Does this device easily integrate/synchronize with my software systems?"

MDTR: Virtualize Yourself v. Adding Staff and Paid Services

Think about a Virtual Assistant — to help with anything and everything including your dictation transcription (yes, dictations can be efficient, especially with a digital approach). The be all, end all is probably LegalTypist, the brainchild of master virtual assistant Andrea Cannavina.

A laundry list of tools for your MDTR arsenal:

FreeConferenceCall.com: Never pay a cent for conference calling.

Internet-based PC Faxing: MaxEmail, MyFax, or RapidFax. You'll need a scanner to make the most of these services. Physical fax machines are so 1990s.

Phones: Skype (free Internet-based phone services). Also OneBox for a "virtual PBX" phone system (large firm phone functionality, small firm budget).

Jott: "Digital sticky notes for your brain."

Google Voice: Keeps you connected no matter where you are.

Google Apps: Gmail offers the best Web mail on the planet with the most storage and Google searchability.

MDTR: Daily Dosage of Legal Tech Smarts

Being a legal technopeasant in 2009 just doesn't cut it any longer — clients won't tolerate it or subsidize tech ignorance or lack of general sophistication.

In addition to continuing to read SmallLaw (thank you) and TechnoLawyer's other newsletters, check out the following resources as well:

• Get a free subscription to Law Technology News and scan it carefully each month.

• If you're an ABA member, join the GP|Solo Division and the Law Practice Management Section if for no other reason than to read their terrific magazines and ezines monthly.

• Also, look to the tremendous selection of practice management and technology books offered by the ABA Law Practice Management Section and the ABA GP|Solo Division.

• Subscribe to The Firm — otherwise known as the ABA's Solosez listserver for lively daily discussion of tech, practice management, and all aspects of small firm life with 4000+ fellow SSF lawyers and staffers. You don't have to be an ABA member to join.

MDTR: Putting It All Together

Find a capable, competent, legal-focused and legal-experienced consultant to manage a proper implementation. Don't attempt a DIY (do it yourself) approach. Do the economic math. Even in tight times, you can't afford it.

Practice smart, make more money, exceed client expectations with better work product quality and faster turnaround times at a reasonable price and above all, have more fun in practice. The MDTR will help get you there — cost-effectively — just the digital prescription for these tough and trying times.

Written by Ross Kodner of MicroLaw.

How to Receive SmallLaw
Small firm, big dreams. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, SmallLaw provides you with a mix of practical advice that you can use today, and insight about what it will take for small law firms like yours to thrive in the future. The SmallLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to Fat Friday: Bob Walsh explains the importance of filing email by case plus he reviews FileCenter and MozyPro, Elaine Dowling describes her backup routine and how it has improved her practice, former large firm lawyer Robert Brouillette offers advice to other "large firm refugees" going out on their own, Edward Zohn reviews Western Digital enterprise-grade hard drives, and Tom Trottier shares his take on the world's first laptop. Don't miss this issue.

How to Receive Fat Friday
Our most serendipitous offering, Fat Friday consists of unsolicited contributions by TechnoLawyer members. You'll no doubt enjoy it because of its mix of interesting topics and genuinely useful knowledge, including brutally honest product reviews and informative how-tos. The Fat Friday newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.